The World’s New Plan to Save the Climate Is Weak, Vulnerable, and Toothless

In 2009, when the Copenhagen climate talks concluded, they were roundly decreed a failure. Why? Because the accord forged there was considered incomplete, its targets for restraining temperature rise were too weak, and there was no legally binding mechanism to compel nations to reduce their carbon pollution.

In 2015, when the Paris climate talks concluded, they were hailed as a historic success—even though the plan is a work in progress, its targets are still too weak, and there is still no real legal penalty for nations that fail to stop polluting. So what gives?

Supporters of the plan argue that it sends a signal to the markets that the days of oil, coal, and gas are numbered—but the dust has settled, and so far, the impact is a mixed bag; in the days since Paris, oil stocks like Exxon and Chevron have actually risen, though coal funds appear to have taken a dip. Furthermore, the nonbinding nature of the plan is such that it could be derailed or at least ignored by any major climate change-denying leader.

The comparison between Paris and Copenhagen may be a bit reductive, sure. Copenhagen left us with a two-and-a-half pager of an outline, basically the equivalent of a scrawled note that said "ok let's just try harder next time."

Well, it's next time, and the document is longer, thoughtful, and more meticulously, even ingeniously worded to get around the omnipresent shadow of an intransigent US Congress (more on that in a second). The Paris plan is clearly better; at least it inks an official agreement between 195 nations that temperature rise should be limited to 2˚C, albeit via a patchwork of voluntary pledges from individual nations, and outlines a mandatory tracking system for charting the pollution-cutting progress of each and a framework for convening future meetings to instate even deeper cuts. But as of now, those voluntary pledges fall far short of the plan's own goal.

In Paris, China and the US, the world's biggest polluters, each agreed to draw down their emissions. That's something. But it's still a letdown. Poor countries still get shafted. And even if all nations hit their (voluntary) pollution reduction targets, we'd still see over 3.5˚C of temperature rise.

I asked the climatologist Michael Mann to explain what this means.

"Well, if there are no further commitments than the ones made in Paris, we're in store for a roughly 3.5˚ C (6.5˚F) warmer (than pre-industrial) world by the end of the century," he told me. "That's a world with substantial loss of species, including the major coral reefs of the world. It is an ice-free Arctic in the summer, and the demise of the polar bear."

That's far, far above the 2˚C level that scientists say is best to prevent catastrophic levels of warming. And those targets are nonbinding! The United States, for instance, has pledged to cut CO2 emissions 12-19 percent from 1990 levels by 2025. China has pledged to see its CO2 emissions peak in 2030. Those are two very unambitious goals from the world's two largest polluting bodies—and if they fail to do even that, well, nothing happens.

Which is another issue. If, say, President Trump were to eliminate Obama's Clean Power Plan and lift the EPA's US carbon regulations (which Republicans hate) in 2017, well, the international community couldn't do much about it. (Because Congress has thwarted every serious effort to legislate domestic CO2-reducing policy as well, all our current carbon curbing is carried out almost exclusively through the executive branch.) Such a move, whether made by a Trump or a Cruz or a Rubio, could in fact undermine or unravel the entire treaty—if the US flouts its responsibility, why should India continue to pursue its carbon goals? Or Brazil? China? Bulgaria? Etc.

Mann, who is cautiously optimistic that the plan can improve given that it calls for deeper cuts and reassessments every five years, spelled out the contribution the treaty will likely make toward preserving our climatic stability as it stands.

"Closer to home, it means increased competition for diminishing land, food, and water, and hence a world with far more conflict. It's not quite Mad Max or Soylent Green," he said. "Unlike business-as-usual emissions and a 9˚ F warmer world, it isn't quite dystopia. But certainly, we're talking about a degraded world, and one we would not be proud leaving behind for our children and grandchildren."

So why couldn't we do better than not-quite dystopia, in the age of rising seas and megadrought? Well, thanks to that cohort of climate science-challenged politicians that govern half of the United States, any actual, binding treaty is a nonstarter. No Congressional Republican would ever consider voting to ratify a climate treaty negotiated by President Obama (or anyone else, for that matter).

As the only major political party on the planet that actively denies climate change is a real and current threat, it has made the prospect of any legally binding progress on an international treaty impossible—ratifying any treaty requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, after all—and it has done so for so long that we've accepted such obstinacy on crucial issues as the new norm. Since Congress effectively doomed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, any official global climate treaty has been more or less DOA.

That, I think, is why the world has reacted so positively—it had to. Green groups that have been waging some of the toughest, least rewarding battles of any activist movement going declared the aspirational plan a success. So did some of the most stringent fossil fuel critics and climate reporters I know. At least there was a deal; at least the international community agreed on something. If this didn't move the needle, well, what's the plan then? Buy some property in Northern Canada and/or fall into despair? Declaring the world's last best chance for organizing a serious global climate plan another failure may have simply been too depressing for many to stomach, too cognitively dissonant, too negative a signal to send to supporter bases and audiences.

The fact that the talks didn't end with China and the US hurling chairs across the room at each other and the fact that there's not a whole lot Republicans can do to stop it short of winning the White House means there's still room for progress; there's still hope. It's an accurate affirmation of the shape and scope of the problem—it just doesn't do much to address it in any way deserving of an urgent, currently-unfolding global disaster.

As for the notion that the plan's mere existence will send a sign to markets that the age of fossil fuels is over—so far, well, that hasn't really happened in toto. Take a quick look at the stock prices of a few of the biggest fossil fuel energy companies, and it's mostly just noise. Oil stocks are up.

So far, anyway; it could take much longer for markets to respond, but it's certainly not a ubiquitous, immediate signal. Coal's down, however.

Peabody Energy, one of the biggest coal companies in the US, is indeed falling, though it's actually been on a steep decline for quite some time.

And even if a market signal is broadcast, that's ultimately an ancillary outcome. Climate change is unfolding as we speak, right now; we're wading through storms like Hurricane Sandy, we're watching Pacific Islands go under, and we're parched in historic droughts. Seems like a situation that calls for a little more than nonbinding voluntary pledges.

After all, it's really not a hopeless endeavor, addressing global environmental crises—it has just been made to feel like one. International treaties can be forged by thousands of hand-shaking bureaucrats to address urgent environmental threats. They've done it before! In the 1990s, when it was discovered that aerosols were eating away at the ozone layer, world leaders quickly and decisively agreed to ban the culpable pollutant. In a period of just 18 months, nations agreed on a legally binding framework capable of imposing serious fines on the trade of products containing the ozone-depleting chemicals. Lo and behold, the ozone hole is recovering.

There is still hope for another such outcome. But climate change—a thornier, even wider-ranging threat to human civilization—has still, even now, received no such response. The plan hatched in Paris is fragile, wobbly, and weak. Until Congress changes its tune, it will likely stay that way—and the burden will fall once again to students, activists, clean technologists, and civilians to continue the thankless, uphill push for meaningful progress as temperatures climb with them.